Reconfigurable and Portable Ultracold Matter Systems

Ultracold atoms have shown great potential in precision time keeping as well as in numerous sensing applications such as high sensitivity magnetometry, precision low-drift inertial navigation, and precision gravitational sensing. Most of the pioneering work related to the use of ultracold atoms for these applications has been done on full-sized experimental units that currently occupy entire university or government research laboratories. For years the promise of ultracold atoms for applications has been met by technical obstacles, namely the difficulty of producing ultracold matter. ColdQuanta’s commercially available miniature atom chip cell has already begun to address this issue by simplifying the route to forming ultracold matter. For the Phase II of this SBIR, we propose to build a complete and compact system for attaining ultracold matter in the form of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) that is based on ColdQuanta’s chip cell technology. Our complete apparatus will lead to increased accessibility of ultracold atoms and help to spur the development of technology and applications that directly benefit from the use of ultracold atoms.